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Could the Twenties be the Decade of the Plant?

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Could the Twenties be the Decade of the Plant?

As the new year dawns and a new decade with it, farmers and ranchers naturally wonder what the next 10 years might bring. Will the '20s be the decade when new, high-tech plant-based competitors do to real meat what almond and oat substitutes have done to milk?

According to the magazine Fast Company, researchers at RethinkX, a think tank, are predicting that and more. RethinkX thinks "we are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruption" of agriculture in history, with the entire U.S. dairy and cattle industry collapsing by 2030.

University of Iowa research ties pesticides to heart-disease deaths | The Gazette

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University of Iowa research ties pesticides to heart-disease deaths | The Gazette

Findings from the study on pyrethroid exposure were published Monday in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal and reported nationally in publications such as the New York Times.

The UI research suggests individuals with high levels of exposure to pyrethroid insecticides are three times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than those with low or no exposure.

“You would think, normally, cancer is an important endpoint or the brain is an important endpoint for these kinds of chemicals,” UI occupational and environmental health professor Hans-Joachim Lehmler told The Gazette.

“So I have to admit, from my personal perspective, that looking at cardiovascular disease — that there is actually a link — was quite unexpected.”

And while the research established an association, both Lehmler and Bao cautioned the study hasn’t established individuals died as a direct result of exposure to pyrethroids. Bao said the findings indicate a high likelihood of a link, but follow-up study is needed.

Farmers Got Billions From Taxpayers In 2019, And Hardly Anyone Objected

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Farmers Got Billions From Taxpayers In 2019, And Hardly Anyone Objected

In 2019, the federal government delivered an extraordinary financial aid package to America's farmers. Farm subsidies jumped to their highest level in fourteen years, most of them paid out without any action by Congress.

The money flowed to farms like Robert Henry's. When I visited in early July, many of his fields near New Madrid, Mo., had been flooded for months, preventing him from working in them. The soybeans that he did manage to grow had fallen in value; China wasn't buying them, in retaliation for the Trump administration's tariffs.

That's when the government stepped in. Some of the aid came from long-familiar programs. Government-subsidized crop insurance covered some of the losses from flooding. Other payments were unprecedented. The U.S. Department of Agriculture simply sent him a check to compensate him for the low prices resulting from the trade war.

 

Monsanto Attempts Defense That Would Negate All Glyphosate-Causes-Cancer Lawsuits – Modern Farmer

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Monsanto Attempts Defense That Would Negate All Glyphosate-Causes-Cancer Lawsuits – Modern Farmer

If this challenge is successful, it will create a precedent that will be extremely difficult to overcome; if Monsanto was legally unable to warn customers about the carcinogenic nature of glyphosate, how can they be held responsible for that? This of course does not address the basic issue of whether glyphosate can in fact cause cancer, nor does it address the decades-long campaign to discredit opposing research, but none of that might matter.